Enlightened Chains pg. 19
hungry, homeless, or oppressed. To treat it as an enemy because it may reveal a few myths to be exactly that is to relinquish all claims to truth in any meaningful way.
It also has to be admitted that there are some things that science cannot answer. Science can say how we came to be here - what mechanism of evolution, opportunity, and genetic development caused us to be here - but it cannot ultimately lay any claim to creating a brotherhood of mankind. Science cannot explain why all of existence has happened. Religion does offer this. More precisely, any of several varieties of religion offer competing explanations and paths for doing so.
The problem with religion is that it does not provide any way to determine what to keep and what to discard. This is the problem that science ultimately has with it. There are an almost infinite number of religious claims, and most claim that they are the only true path. How is a reasonable person to discern which, if any, truly is?
I would put forth that the religion that is most open to the truth as it is discovered has to be, almost in a de facto way, the truest religion. Religion that forces someone to either believe what is patently false or to disbelieve what is undisputable truth cannot be the path to anything but deception. This is actually why reason and science are the best friends of those who would truly pursue their faith. It reveals false religion and false faiths for what they are - a means of limiting mankind rather than liberating him.
So it might be that, as Voltaire claims, man is everywhere in chains. I would say that it is no less true today than it was during his life. However, we at least have better means for breaking those chains today than were available to Voltaire. The problem is that we live in a time when too many are ignorant of the tools available to us - through science or through faith.
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It also has to be admitted that there are some things that science cannot answer. Science can say how we came to be here - what mechanism of evolution, opportunity, and genetic development caused us to be here - but it cannot ultimately lay any claim to creating a brotherhood of mankind. Science cannot explain why all of existence has happened. Religion does offer this. More precisely, any of several varieties of religion offer competing explanations and paths for doing so.
The problem with religion is that it does not provide any way to determine what to keep and what to discard. This is the problem that science ultimately has with it. There are an almost infinite number of religious claims, and most claim that they are the only true path. How is a reasonable person to discern which, if any, truly is?
I would put forth that the religion that is most open to the truth as it is discovered has to be, almost in a de facto way, the truest religion. Religion that forces someone to either believe what is patently false or to disbelieve what is undisputable truth cannot be the path to anything but deception. This is actually why reason and science are the best friends of those who would truly pursue their faith. It reveals false religion and false faiths for what they are - a means of limiting mankind rather than liberating him.
So it might be that, as Voltaire claims, man is everywhere in chains. I would say that it is no less true today than it was during his life. However, we at least have better means for breaking those chains today than were available to Voltaire. The problem is that we live in a time when too many are ignorant of the tools available to us - through science or through faith.
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© 2004 by Xpatriated Texan
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